There's a point to this story, but context is needed.
I travel a lot, and of course one of the awkward times is when you arrive in a foreign city, you've yet to meet colleagues, and its dinner time. What do you do? Going out alone to a nice restaurant in a foreign country can be uncomfortable; sitting at a table by yourself, no where to look and no conversation to keep you busy - many times it's easier to just get a takeaway. Sometimes its nice … two nights ago I was sitting on a veranda in Rotterdam, overlooking water with a nice glass of wine and enjoying my solitude. Today its Hamburg; busy, vibrant, crowded, and with the Germans seemingly a minority population compared to all the migrants on the street. The sidewalk restaurants are filled with groups and couples engaged in animated discussion, courtship, or after something else more basic. So I headed for the nearest transport hub – there's always acceptable food to be found there that tailors for the single traveller. There I sat with my gigantic German sausage and chips, with the ice hockey match between Germany and Canada being broadcast on big screens. Not being a huge fan, I was looking around and saw a reflection in a mirror across the room. After a double take I realized it was me, because at first it didn't look like the me I carry around in my head. The me as seen from the inside is the me that drives all I am. Yet I am so unused to the external visage that from the outside I looked like a stranger. I have to say I find the insiders view of me far more attractive than the external. I play a game sometimes when I travel; I look at people's heads and speculate on what sort of conversation is going on inside. Sadly, so many people seem to choose to surround themselves with distractions; buried in their cell phones and immersed in earphones playing who knows what. I sometimes think it's a wonder that any heads have much of value going on inside at all – perhaps they're all simply becoming overloaded sensory processing machines and losing their ability for higher rational thought? Anyway, that issue aside, it started me thinking about how, in all probability, everyone else's internal views of themselves are also hugely different to how I first see them. When we develop a new relationship with someone, all we have to begin with is the external – it takes a long time to discover the internal perspective. Only when someone allows you into their head can you begin to get a glimmer of what they really look like. And that makes me wonder, do some people even let themselves into their own heads? For so many people seem to not have any perspective of what they look like inside. It takes courage to look at the view inside your head: it can give you a shock. And, as has been said, “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.” That's why I think so many people don't see the view inside, because so few people seem to have a desire to live and so few people have a readiness to die. Instead, it seems many people are competing to have the best external appearance of living. Yet the inside view is what they really look like to God. No wonder he has compassion.
1 Comment
r4space
12/5/2016 10:36:40 pm
Wondering what "the desire to live" looks like - and would i recognise it?
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Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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